February 13, 2006
By Ndaba Dlamini
IMAGINE boarding a train to town from Soweto, hopping on to a taxi to Ghandi Square and finally catching a Metrobus to Sandton, all with one swipe of a card.
This seemingly wishful thinking may be realised if a feasibility study by the City's transportation planning and development department to integrate Joburg's ticketing and fare system, is given the thumbs up.
The study, which emanated from the 2003 - 2008 Integrated Transport Plan (ITP), was initiated to investigate the possibility of a unified ticketing and fare system for Johannesburg. Prior to it, a "mini study" was conducted which found that the present fare structures and levels negatively affected the poor, the main users of public transport.
An integrated or standardised fare system, according to Zwelakhe Mayaba, the deputy director of transportation planning and development, implies a single entity collecting all fare revenue and apportioning it to operators, with a fully integrated and inter-operable system with a single form of payment.
"There are so many ways which people use to pay to use public transport - tags, tickets, cash - and this causes confusion and strain on the part of commuters. The variety of systems has led to difficulties in managing the transport subsidy and physical discontinuities between different types of tickets and ticketing systems, thereby presenting problems for users and operators."
The study also looked into the possibility of implementing a transport planning structure or institution that is able to regulate and control the City's public transport system as a whole. This is important if a standardised fare system is to have a chance of being implemented.
"The project intends to provide a framework describing the direction in which the City would like the fare system to progress," Mayaba says. "Unfortunately, at the moment, we do not have the mandate to integrate the fare system because the majority of public transport services are not contracted by the City."
During the course of the investigation, a Fares Working Group of bus, rail and taxi operator representatives, commuter representatives and City officials was established and workshops were held in May and September 2005 to deliberate on the study findings.
"We received overwhelming support from transport operators but there were concerns voiced by taxi representatives. One of their main apprehensions was that there are so many taxi associations that it will be difficult to come up with single fare system for taxis," Mayaba adds.
Drawing on the ITP, the project noted that the planning of a new fare system would require a trade-off between the following objectives:
- Attract the maximum number of passengers;
- Generate the maximum revenue; and
- Increase mobility of the city's residents city-wide, for certain areas within the city, certain target groups (such as commuters, students, the elderly, the indigent and people with disabilities), at certain times of the day (for example off-peak) and for certain trip purposes.
An assessment of the fare system of all the public transport operators in the city, including the Gautrain fares, was also undertaken. The assessment found that minibus taxis, which are responsible for 72 percent of public transport trips in the city, operate with cash only and do not issue tickets.
Bus operators and Metrorail, on the other hand, use single, weekly and monthly tickets that are generally route specific and have fixed validity periods; most bus operators sell 10- and 12-trip weekly tickets and 44- and 52-monthly tickets, which are subsidised.
The project also found that a variety of fare collection equipment is used. However, a common platform is being established on which common grounds for operation can be explored.
"Most transport operators are investing in smartcard systems, with Putco and Metrobus making use of the Wayfarer smartcard technology," Mayaba says. "Metrorail is in transition from the magnetic stripe system to a fully automatic fare collection and control system that is based on the smartcard system."
As a step towards the realisation of integrating the city's ticketing and fare system, the project recommended, among other things, that:
- Lower fees should be retained by rail as it is the only modal alternative that is affordable to the poor;
- Fare levels for all bus services should be standardised through the use of a common fare function;
- Off-peak discounting is almost absent in the city, but needs serious consideration in future contract and service design, in that it can assist in achieving a number of the City's objectives;
- The process of introducing sophisticated ticketing technology will need to be incremental. The first major step and milestone to be strived for in the city is for mini-bus taxis to make the transition from cash fares to smartcards;
- In the longer term the city fare rules will need to minimise transfer costs by discounting the second boarding penalty or eliminating it completely (Metrobus and Metrorail already allow free transfer within their own services within two hours of boarding); and
- The City and provincial governments explore the opportunities that will be provided by the Gautrain Automatic Fare Collection system to lead the process towards implementing an integrated ticketing system by using its multi-modal system eventually to expand regionally to also cover other rail and bus services.
"It must be noted that the project is a mere exploration to gain a deeper understanding of the existing fare and ticketing system in the city and explore issues, benefits and disbenefits to the various stakeholders and users. We are pointing the direction we would like the city's transport operators to take in order to standardise ticketing and fares," Mayaba explains.
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